Caught Between Two Billionaires - Skye Warren Page 0,19
his expression grim. “Damn him,” he mutters. “He should have given you some warning at least.”
Damn him. I cling to those two words like they’re a life preserver. Like when Christopher helped me break into the artist studio. We’re together, aren’t we? “You won’t help him, will you?”
My mother runs a shaky hand through her hair. “I’m ruined. No one will have me after this. Half the town knows what happened by now. There’s probably a YouTube video.”
I hate that she’s right. Daddy did more than make sure she couldn’t get his money. In that one public moment he made sure she would never marry well again. Everyone will say there must be something wrong with her, for Daddy to omit her this way. She’ll be the laughingstock of high society. Those rich husbands of hers, they didn’t only marry her body. They married her position in society. Her connections. The way she could host a dinner party with senators and billionaires. It doesn’t matter if I become a world-renowned artist, my mother will never get another society invitation again.
The limo turns onto the highway and speeds up. I’m sitting next to my mother, and I reach across the supple leather to take her hand in mine. Across from us Christopher looks haggard. He stares out the tinted window where the city speeds by.
I squeeze my mother’s hand. “It will be okay.”
“How?” Her mouth forms the word, but no sound comes out.
“Christopher will help us,” I say, the words like a tether. The red and white life preserver for me to hold on to when it’s too hard to swim. He’s always been there when I need him. Why would this time be any different? “He’s the executor, so he’s the one who decides what counts as being for me or for you. He’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
God knows there’s enough money in that trust fund to take care of my mother twenty times over, in the most extravagant ways she can think up. I didn’t expect Daddy to leave me empty-handed, necessarily, but I also didn’t expect to get every terrible cent.
The entire St. Claire fortune, minus the yacht.
I look at Christopher, but he hasn’t moved. I might as well have turned him to granite, the same way I did to my father at the exhibit. I don’t feel like I’m cursed and full of rage. My dirty-blonde hair doesn’t slither and hiss, but the men around me are as cold and hard as stone.
“You’ll help us, won’t you? It’s too cruel, what Daddy did. It’s wrong. If the money is mine, I can spend it however I want. Why shouldn’t Mom get some of it?”
It won’t matter if none of the rich assholes who think they own the world will marry my mother, not if she’s already taken care of. It will hurt her to be shunned by her so-called friends, but at least she’ll be able to live comfortably.
The strong profile and ebony hair does not move a single centimeter even as the limo exits the freeway and turns toward our hotel. Through the windshield I can see a small crowd gathered at the front door. The press. Not the hard-hitting journalism that exposed the corruption at my old school after my Medusa painting. These are the tabloid freelancers and gossip bloggers. We aren’t celebrities in the way that a musician or a model is, but everyone likes to see the rich brought low. They’ve come to gloat at my mother’s pain.
“Christopher!”
He speaks in a low voice to the driver, who turns before we reach the crowd. There’s already a uniformed cop waiting to direct us into the parking garage. An entrance for celebrities and politicians, I realize. Someone set this up ahead of time. A way into the building without having to run the gauntlet of paparazzi.
Someone who knew we would need this.
“You,” I whisper, my chest crushed by a thousand-pound weight.
Christopher finally looks at me, and I can’t contain my gasp as I see the resignation in his eyes. “It’s his last request, Harper. The only thing he ever asked of me. How can I say no?”
It takes me forty-five minutes and a Valium to get my mother to relax in her bedroom, her lashes still damp from tears of anxiety and grief. Light batters my eyes as I step out of her bedroom and close the door gently behind me.
“Have you always taken care of her like that?” Christopher asks from the